Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).

Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.

Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

But is the skin of a South African python (also called a Natal rock python; Python sebae natalensis) or the African rock python (Python sebae sebae)?

The Natal rock python may be the “Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake” of Kipling’s Just So Stories.

It is intriguing that the African rock python’s type locality given is “America” — an obvious mistake. According to Loveridge (1936), no type locality was given. According to Stimson (1969), it was “Guiara, Brazil.”

Feral specimens of Python sebae natalensis have been identified in North America in Presque Isle/Erie, Pennsylvania, in August 1901 and the Florida Everglades in the 1990s.